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This guide to social planet is for new users in particular. It concentrates on how to get along, without going too much into details. For specific technical questions (e.g., how to set up a GNU social-instance) please ask in the groups !gnusocial and !sn, or on social planet's Public Timeline. You may also find technical information at http://federation.skilledtests.com/

The sequence of points follows roughly the frequency of the questions that have been asked by new users.

Users of one instance (or: service) can follow, be followed by, and communicate with users of any other instance.

Other instances are, e.g., loadaverage.org, status.vinilox.eu, micro.fragdev.com, gnusocial.de, indy.im, quitter.no, rainbowdash.net, etc. The current number of microblogging instances using the GNU social/StatusNet software is probably about 50, social planet is one of them. As they all use the same software (GNU social/StatusNet) and transmission protocol (OStatus), they can talk to each other just like e-mail servers can talk to each other, even though they are independent and run by different companies.

Connections between instances are established by users following each other. Via such followings all these instances can (at least in principle) be joined into one compound structure or network of self-contained instances. This is called the Federation. GNU social/StatusNet is structured in such a way that there needs to be only one following of a user a from instance A to a user b from instance to B to make b visible to everybody in instance A via The Whole Known Network. (See below on the Three Timelines.) The Whole Known Network is the wider network of instances as seen by social planet. It looks different on, say, loadaverage, because on loadaverage there are different followings to remote instances than on social planet.

There is no central "unit" the breakdown of which could bring down the whole network. If one instance goes down or the admins start doing things you don't like, you can create your account on another instance. You will still be on the GNU social-network and still be able to communicate with your GNU social-friends. You just need to tell your contacts your new address.

Addresses on GNU social look like this:

@user@instance.org

Your address is:

@{nickname}@social.communia.org

If you follow another user, or if the user is on the same instance, you may omit the ...@instance.org part and just use the short address

Android clients

— Andstatus (currently in active development by @andstatus@loadaverage.org)has great conversation view as hierarchical tree
Image upload and display of image attachments
oversized notices can be opened via web browser

New social planet uses the default user interface. It is visually very similiar to other well known commercial microblogging services. Its technical name is "Qvitter". In discussions "Qvitter" and "New social planet" can mean the same thing, but "Qvitter" mostly refers to the software and "New social planet" refers to the installation of the Qvitter-software on social planet.

Classic social planet is the canonical GNU social-/StatusNet-interface. At the moment some settings and features (e.g., creating a group) have to be done in Classic social planet as they are not yet fully implemented in New social planet.

There are three timelines that show differerent notices (depending on the sources):

Timeline ("Home"):
all notices from the people you follow (not just the ones they send to people you happen to follow as well).

Public Timeline:
all notices posted by social planet accounts.

The Whole Known Network:
not only all notices of the Public Timeline but also those of all people on other ("remote") instances of the GNU social-/StatusNet-federation followed by at least one social planet user (i.e., accounts known to social planet, see above What is the Federation?).

If you really want to change these settings in New social planet go to:

Your header avatar (upper right) → Settings → Profile

(1): Change to "Ask me first" and you will receive e-mail notifications when someone wants to follow you. It leaves the subscription request pending until you either confirm or reject it. (But this does not work in New social planet yet, so be careful with this setting.)

You can delete your account, but all your notices will be deleted on social planet as well – and this will break conversation threads. If you restore your account on another instance, it's better to rename your social planet account to something like MyNickhasmovedtoFragdev instead of deleting it.

You are forwarded to Twitter and have to authorise social planet to use your Twitter account.

According to user reports this doesn't always work on the first or second attempt. If it doesn't, try again later. The cause of the problem may be on Twitter's side. Your browser must not block Javascript or Cookies.

Public Groups

On social planet you can create a group for nearly any topic, like Feminism, Football, FreeBSD. ("Nearly" because the laws in the country hosting the website may prohibit such things as slander and hate speech.)

You can be a member of as many groups as you like. As group-member you can post to the whole group by attaching ! to the group name, e.g., !feminism, in the notice. All group members, whether or not they follow you, will get the notice in their Home Timelines. You follow and unfollow a group like you follow and unfollow a person.

Private Groups

An admin of a group has the option to declare it private. This means:

1) new members must be approved by the admin(s), and

2) all notices are forced to be private.
That is, notices in the group are only visible to group members (they don't appear in the Public Timeline), and it is not possible for users of other instances to be members of a private group on social planet.

Lists are available only in Classic social planet. Due to feature merges in GNU social they do work but are a bit messy to manage and delete.

Creating lists

The main hurdle with lists on social planet is to create a new one. After its creation, you can manage it and add people from social planet as well as from remote instances on its newly created page (see below).

To start a list in Classic social planet you best proceed by browsing through the subscription lists of someone who has an account on social planet, not on a remote instance. In the latter case you will not be able to add people from their subscription lists to your list, i.e, create a list at all.

In both subscription lists you'll find beneath each person listed a tiny box with an edit-symbol. As they show up in these lists, it's no longer problematic whether they have their account on social planet or on a remote instance. Click on that symbol and type in the name of your list. You'll receive an error message, but don't mind, just click "ok" and refresh the page. The list has been successfully created and is now shown in the left hand side column.

Managing lists

To manage your list, go to your page in Classic social planet and open the list by clicking on its name in the left column. On its page, click "Edit" and a menu opens.

In the section "Add or remove people" below you can now search every person known to social planet from the whole known network (see above What is the Federation?) by name and add her to your list. (Which isn't possible prior to the creation of the list when the person appears only in subscription lists of people on remote instances. See above.) Likewise you can remove the person from the list here.

In the upper section you can reword the list's name and give it a description that is displayed on the list's page. With the option "private" you can make the list invisible to other people on social planet.

Deleting lists

To delete your lists, go to their directory, choose one, click "Edit", tick the box "Private", then click "Save". You'll get the option:

"Setting a public tag as private will permanently remove all the existing subscriptions to it. Do you still want to continue?" Yes / No

Click "Yes". You return to the Edit-page of the list. Now click "Delete". You'll get the option:

"Deleting this tag will permanantly remove all its subscription and membership records. Do you still want to continue?" Yes / No

Click "Yes" and you're forwarded to your Home timeline. Click your Profile, and the list is gone and neither to be found in your directory of lists.

When you click a remote nickname in New social planet you are brought to a small profile window showing the full remote address, e.g., @blabla@status.vinilox.eu. Click the button "Follow". That should be all.

In Classic social planet:

In Classic social planet you're forwarded to the remote instance's user profile (which may differ in layout and theme from Classic social planet). Look for the Subscribe-button (usually in the upper right). A subscription box opens and you are prompted to enter your own "webfinger address", i.e., {nickname}@social.communia.org Subscribe and you are redirected to your Classic social planet page where you have to confirm the subscription.

There are several ways to make notices visible only to selected people, not to the public. None of them work in New social planet yet.

All four methods only work within the same instance. Users outside social planet won't be able to see the notice.

a. Direct Messages → The notice will be visible only to its recipient in his DM inbox (there are no Direct Messages to more than one person).

b. Set your account to "Make updates visible only to my followers" and "Ask me first if someone wants to follow me" in

Settings → Profile → Subscription policy (below)

c. Post to a private group of which you are a member → The post will only be visible to the group members (see above under Groups).

(Note to c: You can use any client to post to a private group by using the !group-tag.)

d. Post to a public group and close the lock on the right of the drop-down menu beneath the message field. The post will then only be visible to the group members. (Although at the time of writing, this does not work. The post will be visible to everyone.)

(Note to d: Make sure you don't leave "Everyone" or "My Colleagues at social planet" selected, otherwise your post will go to the timelines of every social planet user, which is not what you want if you close the lock)

(Note to d: The lock method is only available in Classic social planet. There is no lock feature in New social planet or any other known client at the time of writing.)

Sometimes in a blog-post or email, you don't want to cite just one notice but a whole conversation. Each notice, each reply, and each conversation has its own URL, and the ways to find them differ slightly in Classic social planet and in New social planet.

New social planet:

In New social planet click on the time stamp of a notice (or "details" if you have expanded it). This will show the notice page with the conversation expanded.

Classic social planet:

Click on the the time stamp of any notice. The notice will reappear on a separate page. Click "in context". The whole conversation that this notice is involved in will be displayed on a new page, with the selected notice either on the top or further down.

Similar to following persons or groups you can subscribe to (or follow) hashtags and search words. Notices containing them will then appear in your Home timeline.

Following search words and hashtags is not limited to notices from accounts on social planet but covers notices from remote instances as well.

To follow hashtags (# + ...) put the word with the hashtag-symbol # prefixed into the search box of Classic social planet and press Enter. You'll arrive at the search result page. Similiar, to subscribe to search words, put them without hashtag-symbol into the search box. You'll get a much larger list because the search not only covers individual words but also looks for occurrences of the phrase inside larger phrases. To follow (or: subscribe to) both hashtags and search words, click on the tiny "Subscribe"-button in the upper right corner of the lists. You'll then receive the notices containing them in your Home Timeline.

Following one word often yields too many results, so it is expedient to combine words and follow them as complete phrases.

You can unfollow those notices by unfollowing the hashtags and search phrases.

In the latest versions of GNU social, repeats/requeets do not get sent to your followers on other instances. This was possible some time ago in StatusNet, but this feature has been removed due to a security issue. GNU social developers are working on a solution. In the meantime, if you really want your Repeat/Requeet to federate, you can always do a "manual repeat", i.e., write RQ @username, and then copy-paste the notice.